The Death of Maria Malibran, dir. Werner Schroeter, West Germany 1972, German with English subtitles, 104 min.
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“Watching The Death of Maria Malibran and Willow Springs, it struck me that these films are not about Love, but about Passion. [...] What is passion? It’s a state, something that falls on you out of the blue, that takes hold of you, that grips you for no reason, that has no origin. [...] Passion gives itself all the conditions necessary to continue, and, at the same time, it destroys itself. In a state of passion one is not blind, one is simply not oneself. To be oneself no longer makes sense. One sees things differently” — Michel Foucault
In his early work, Schroeter drew inspiration from opera, creating several short 8mm films about Maria Callas. The Death of Maria Malibran, considered one of his best films by many, here centres on Maria Malibran, the fabled Spanish-French opera singer who died aged 28 in Manchester in 1836, as a baroque meditation on grief that dissolves biography into a fantasia across three women: Magdalena Montezuma, Candy Darling and Ingrid Caven.
In Johannas Traum, Schroeter invokes the visions of Saint Joan, repurposing unused footage of Candy Darling and Ingrid Caven pantomiming from the film.
This screening will be preceded by an introduction from Sam Dolbear.
The Death of Maria Malibran will screen on a 35mm print courtesy of the Eye Filmmuseum.
In his early work, Schroeter drew inspiration from opera, creating several short 8mm films about Maria Callas. The Death of Maria Malibran, considered one of his best films by many, here centres on Maria Malibran, the fabled Spanish-French opera singer who died aged 28 in Manchester in 1836, as a baroque meditation on grief that dissolves biography into a fantasia across three women: Magdalena Montezuma, Candy Darling and Ingrid Caven.
In Johannas Traum, Schroeter invokes the visions of Saint Joan, repurposing unused footage of Candy Darling and Ingrid Caven pantomiming from the film.
This screening will be preceded by an introduction from Sam Dolbear.
The Death of Maria Malibran will screen on a 35mm print courtesy of the Eye Filmmuseum.
Sam Dolbear is writer, teacher, and researcher based in London. He has written books on the avant-garde radio producer Ernst Schoen (Goldsmith Press, 2023) and the palm-reader and later sexologist Charlotte Wolff (MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE, 2024). Most recently he co-translated a 1925 agitprop play by Berta Lask on the resurrection of the German peasant leader Thomas Müntzer (Rab Rab Press, 2025). He’s an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins and a Visiting Fellow at the Warburg Institute and was a co-founder of the audio-radio collective MayDay Radio, where he’s collecting together an archive on the London Lighthouse, a centre for people with HIV/AIDS opened in 1986.
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04:00 pm
Sun, 01 Mar 2026
Cinema 1
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Cinema 1
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